small update and context: I finally finished my first semester’s classes last Thursday 😱 And that gave me time to rest – although the first days after left me with such low energy since I was doing six presentations back-to-back over the past two weeks. Like, ultimate nerd move just reading an academic anthology of articles on Chris Nolan’s cinema for fun… but it didn’t work well, I was falling asleep while reading 😂 I still have one exam left this Thursday, but I’m very grateful for this first semester. I’ll write a reflection later on, but for now, here are some film recommendations and honest reviews from films I recently watched (or just uploaded progress to on Letterboxd).
It’s actually more of a diary of my experience with the films than actual reviews. My method runs against what I was taught about writing reviews for film (and any other art form) in Expository Writing class: you must pick a lens to critique the film with (i.e. mainly critique its story, characters, or how it handled a theme typical of its genre) and do it objectively. (And do it with Daniel Mendelsohn’s “KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGMENT” formula.)
But ehhh, I’m too lazy to write like a real critic (and I guess I’ve been burnt out with academic writing in the past four years of college, and I want to return to more creative writing), and it’s more interesting for me to give my personal take on the films. I hope you enjoy it somehow.
Oblivion
One of my favourite sci-fi movies that I have fond memories of; I just love the visuals and the feel of this movie (they were going with a brighter, airier feel as opposed to the gritty, dark dystopian aesthetic of most post-apocalyptic films), and the plot was really resonant for me (even on my second rewatch almost six years later) – Tom Cruise plays a guardian pilot on the earth with his partner and assistant (played by Andrea Riseborough), as they await their upcoming trip to the human colony in Titan (the Saturn moon). But he’s haunted by the memories of a woman (played by Olga Kurylenko) whose identity he can’t place. Suddenly, a spaceship crashes and, as he inspects the ruins, he finds a cryochamber carrying the same woman from his memories.
After watching it the first time in 2019 while we were preparing to go to the U.S. (that’s partly why it was memorable to me), I read the reviews on it and was disappointed to find that it wasn’t a unique sci-fi film (I wasn’t as exposed to this genre and the critical thinking related to it yet). But it was something that I just really liked. It was really fun watching Tom Cruise in this role, too. And Olga Kurylenko was just really beautiful and I was glad to see someone kinda Asian-looking in a Hollywood film like this hehe.
I guess I also liked it a lot because it reminded me of all the philosophical, sci-fi related games I played back in high school – they filled me with a sense of longing for something I couldn’t articulate. This film made me think a lot, and its concepts have remained with me throughout the years. So I still love this film despite its less-than-stellar script (ugh, the ending lines were totally unnecessary). I only realised on my rewatch that it’s directed by Joseph Kosinski, who also did Tron: Legacy and Top Gun: Maverick, which I both loved. So I would recommend watching it if you like Tom Cruise, sci-fi, survival stories, and just enjoying visual spectacles.
3.5/5 stars
65
Adam Driver in another sci-fi movie! Well, I had a lot of problems with the sci-fi exposition and overall story of the film, but it resonated with me because of its depiction of grief. It’s about a space pilot named Mills (Adam Driver) who leaves his wife and sick daughter to transport humans in cryo-sleep across the galaxy, and the story takes place waaaay before humanity springs up on earth (something my theology heartily disagrees with). Unexpectedly battered by asteroids, the ship crashes on a planet and all but Mills and a little girl (Ariana Greenblatt) die in the crash. The two work together to try to leave the planet and travel through a hostile forest landscape infested with “alien” monsters – actually, dinosaurs!
I appreciate how the filmmakers took time to show how Mills (Adam’s character) suffered with the trauma of the crash – like in that poignant scene where his hands are shaking. Action films often show characters going through traumatic events and they just brush them off so they can move on quickly to the next plot point, but I really appreciated the realism they gave Adam’s character in that they showed his struggle and vulnerability. I also LOVE how they showed that it’s okay to take time to grieve – even if there’s an asteroid incoming and carnivorous dinosaurs running around. I needed to hear that at the point of time I watched the film with my family.
Unlike some other people who reviewed the film, I actually appreciate how the little girl, Koa, spoke in a different, alien language. After watching Star Trek and Stargate where characters mostly speak in English (I haven’t gotten to the pure Klingon parts in ST yet), I’ve been annoyed how diverse cultures aren’t really played in sci-fi. So I was fascinated with how Koa and Mills’ language barrier gave them a lot of challenges, and also proved to work out for some plot points.
I’m also speaking both as someone with a degree in Communications and as someone who’s had to learn three languages growing up 😂 I’ve also dealt with a lot of kids who don’t speak the same language as me, which is frustrating but also fun sometimes when we work out creative ways to communicate with each other. To see that struggle to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak the same language on screen was so satisfying haha.
I would talk more about the story problems here, but I don’t wanna hide this part in spoilers, so I’ll write about it in a future blog post.
I’d recommend this film to Adam Driver fans and those interested in exploring the theme of grief in film. For sci-fi fans, I’m not sure if this will show anything new or interesting, but it’s a nice survival film; just not too stunning.
3.5/5 stars
In the Line of Fire
My dad played this film over the weekend, and honestly it’s not really my thing. It was about a Secret Service agent who’s pretty old (played by Clint Eastwood) – he was with JFK and was working during his assassination – and he discovers a threat against the current US president by some creep who calls himself Booth (played by John Malkovich; his codename is a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s assassin).
It was cool seeing Rene Russo there as the female lead after knowing her through the Thor films (and figuring our Clint Eastwood was naturally a lefty but forced to use his right hand growing up LOL) and talking with my mom, wondering why John Malkovich loves playing weirdo characters (and in real life he actually saved someone having a heart attack or something) plus me seeing him play a sensitive and artsy Biff in “Death of a Salesman”.
But yeah, even though I was phasing out a lot while watching, it’s nice if you like thrillers and action films, plus that grainy, analog feel along with the 90s architecture. It was cool that Eastwood’s character loved jazz and he was flexing his piano-playing skills.
I’m not sharing my rating here because it wouldn’t be fair – I just didn’t sit through all the parts of the film since I wasn’t interested. ig it just doesn’t appeal to my generation.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
I loved seeing the Tomb Raider series on TV as a kid, but watching this first film again as an adult – I didn’t like it anymore. I hate how Lara’s sexualized; seeing the nearly all-male filmmakers during the credit titles, it makes sense, and I guess that was the point of the original video game too 😂 But forgetting the whole male gaze topic, I loved seeing her being badass – doing some trapeze workout in her mansion and riding big bikes.
The basic story is that Lara Croft is a rich British kid with a mansion and daredevil attitude who has to find/steal a triangle artifact that would destroy the world. But she is tempted to use it to turn back time and relive moments with her father who passed away.
The writers missed a huge opportunity to explore how her recklessness as a rich kid could be transformed and make her into a wiser character. Her grief over her father wasn’t set up well (though it was really cool seeing Angelina Jolie and Jon Voight play a father and daughter there haha), which made Jolie’s beautiful acting not as believable or logical, because of how she was (or wasn’t) set up as a character.
I found myself shipping her and Bryce (c’mon, give some love to the nerds), and I inwardly cheered when the male gaze thing was flipped when Lara stole Daniel Craig’s towel 🤣 Also, I was happy I could finally understand a bit of what Lara and the mystery girl were talking about in Russian (the little girl has an accent speaking it so I immediately knew she’s not fluent XD). It was also fun listening to my dad talking about the old tech there –
*when the monk appeared* Dad: “wait for it… wait for it! – a sat phone!”
Mom: gamit pa nila ung Sony Erickson dun
Dad: yeah it was being promoted in a lot of films then
Me: *has a flashback of all the old phones I’ve seen on films growing up*
Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing the sequel and seeing if my opinion on it now will be better than how I saw the first film.
2.5/5
Following
Group project goals T_T … but made with $6,000 dollars naman xD
^That was kind of the only sentence I wrote in my review, but for the sake of the blog, I’ll explain the story and add more notes. It’s about a writer-nobody in London (played by Jeremy Theobald) who has a people-watching hobby where he follows people around and observes them. One day, a well-dressed guy (played by Alex Haw) he’s following catches him, says his name is Cobb and that he’s a thief, and then recruits him to be a fellow-thief. They get caught up with a woman (played by Lucy Shaw) who’s being held in blackmail by her mob-boss ex, and the writer’s life gets more complicated…
This was Christopher Nolan’s first film – I actually saw it for class before I went down the whole rabbit whole about him, and it was pretty cool. Our prof chose him as our director case study since he “started from nothing” – initially working as a camera/crew guy shooting media stuff for the corporate world, who made this film at 28 with his own salary, hiring his friends to act and shooting at friends homes every other week for a year.
For a first film, foreshadowing his future films’ themes, it was already told in a nonlinear fashion. It was a great experience trying to understand what was happening to the guy when the present and future kept being interspersed. The mystery was intriguing, and I already liked the character, with his long hair and relatable hobby, from the start – so that helped.
My other favourite thing about the film are the “beautiful inserts” Nolan put there. There are lots of shots of objects – mementos – that Cobb and the writer were pilfering through in other people’s houses (these shots also make up the title sequence, which, with its black-and-white film, reminds me of the opening sequence of To Kill a Mockingbird).
In the BTS video of Following, Nolan described how he uses inserts of the objects in the film as a connector, something that glues the story like time. According to him, with little money, you can still shoot “beautiful inserts” – “soften the light to the side, throw up the lens… it’s a lovely way to give the audience a feeling of the texture of the world.”
I’m a sucker for found objects (thanks to Keri Smith and my Input strength) so this struck a chord with me (it’s also a device Nolan has used in other films; I had a slide dedicated to it in my cinematography project for Insomnia).
It’s like, you have all the trappings of a badass noir film in it, but at its heart is how Cobb tells the writer to find each homeowner’s memento box, ruffle through it without taking anything, just so the people will realise that someone else looked at it. With the concept that “everyone has a box” full of the memories closest to them, Nolan was able to find an emotional core, something so relatable, like the themes of family and grief in Interstellar and Inception. The idea of the memento box in Following transcends cultures and ages.
I’d write more but this is getting pretty long. 4/5 stars.
***
So I originally wanted to include my notes on “Tenet” here – would’ve been a perfect segway from one Nolan film to another, but it got super long, and I’m putting it in the next post. I hope you enjoyed this marathon of reviews (man it looks like a Buzzfeed format lol) and hopefully they’ll make you watch some (or all) of those films.
Let me know your picks/favourites in the comments! 🎞🍿